Team Excels at Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot

Earns Honors and Awards in Every Category
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Yi Han Goh and R. David Gallo representing Columbia in the round of 32.
New York, April 03, 2013—The Columbia Law School team competing in the recently concluded 20th annual Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Vienna, Austria returned home with a record number of honors.
 
After competing against 289 other universities from 67 countries, the Columbia Law School team was one of 64 to make the elimination rounds. The Law School students eventually reached the quarterfinals of the team oral arguments and earned awards and honors in every possible category:
  • joint 5th place overall
  • Honorable Mention for Best Claimant’s Memorandum
  • Honorable Mention for Best Respondent’s Memorandum
  • Individual Honorable Mentions for Best Speaker awarded to R. David Gallo ’14, Yi Han Goh ’13 and Megha Kalbag ’14
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R. David Gallo and Megha Kalbag at a preliminary round with opponents from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Egypt.
This represents the largest number of awards and honors received by a Columbia Law School team in the competition’s 20-year history and the largest number received by any participating university this year.
 
This year's team members are: Ben Arad ’15, Dennis Fan ’15, R. David Gallo ’14, Yi Han Goh ’13, Christian Jensen ’15, Megha Kalbag ’14 and Joseph Luizzi ’15.
 
Adjunct Professors Alejandro M. Garro and Robert Smith ’86,  and Professors Philip M. Genty and George A. Bermann made themselves available to the team throughout the year to answer questions as they arose, and Dean of Students Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison provided invaluable institutional support. Fellow Columbia Law School students and Vis alumni worked with the team at numerous practice rounds over the spring semester while students from other universities provided the team with constant inspiration and motivation.
 
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The 2013 Columbia Vis team (from left: Ben Arad, R. David Gallo, Megha Kalbag, Dennis Fan, Christian Jensen, Yi Han Goh and Joe Luizzi) at a practice moot in the Austrian Supreme Court on the eve of the competition.
The Vis Moot is the world’s largest private international law moot court competition, organized by the Institute of International Commercial Law at Pace University and hosted by the University of Vienna Faculty of Law. It aims to foster the study of international commercial law and arbitration for resolution of international business disputes through its application to a concrete problem of a client and to train law leaders of tomorrow in methods of alternative dispute resolution.